Congress blocks rule barring mentally impaired from guns

Legislation would block mentally ill from firearms

FILE - In this Friday, Dec. 14, 2012 file photo, parents leave a staging area after being reunited with their children following a shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where Adam Lanza fatally shot 27 people, including 20 children. The Republican-led Senate voted Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017, to block an Obama-era regulation that would prevent an estimated 75,000 people with mental disorders from being able to purchase a firearm. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)

Photo: Jessica Hill, FRE

WASHINGTON - Congress on Wednesday sent President Donald Trump legislation blocking an Obama-era rule designed to keep guns out of the hands of certain mentally disabled people.

On a vote of 57-43, the Senate backed the resolution, just one of several early steps by the Republican-led Congress to undo regulations implemented by former President Barack Obama. The House had passed the measure earlier this year. The White House has signaled Trump will sign the legislation.

The Obama rule would have prevented an estimated 75,000 people with mental disorders from being able to purchase a firearm. It was crafted as part of Obama's efforts to strengthen the federal background check system in the wake of the 2012 massacre of 20 young students and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old with a variety of impairments, including Asperger's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, killed his mother at their home, then went to school where he killed the students, adults and himself. He used his mother's guns in the attack.

The Obama administration rule required the Social Security Administration to send in the names of beneficiaries with mental impairments who also have a third party manage their benefits.

But lawmakers, with the backing of the National Rifle Association and advocacy groups for the disabled, opposed the regulation and encouraged Congress to undertake a rarely successful parliamentary tool designed to void regulations with which Congress takes issue.

The House also voted to repeal three Labor Department regulations Wednesday, including a rule that established when states could require drug testing for certain laid-off workers seeking unemployment insurance. Critics seeking the repeal said the department crafted the regulation so narrowly that it undermined congressional intent to give states more leeway to use drug testing in their unemployment insurance programs.

On the gun rule, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, spearheaded the repeal effort, saying the regulation unfairly stigmatizes the disabled and infringes on their constitutional right to bear arms. He said that the mental disorders covered through the regulation are filled with "vague characteristics that do not fit into the federal mentally defective standard" prohibiting someone from buying or owning a gun.

On the labor rule, Texas, Mississippi and Wisconsin are among the states seeking more flexibility in using drug tests in their unemployment insurance programs. Republicans complained that the Obama administration regulation undercut that flexibility.